[CLOSED PR] Disables harbinger wraith on RP

[github_bot]

PULL REQUEST DETAILS





About the PR
See title, plaguebringer and trickster are still enabled.
Why's this needed?
Harbinger is based around the idea of just summoning as many minions as possible and overwhelming the crew. In theory there *is* roleplay to be had in that, but in practice it tends to quickly turn rounds into chaotic "everyone for themselves" slaughter fests where security get carpel tunnel and medical use 100u of styptic a minute.
I did think the wraith/summons chat channel would help with controlling the chaos a little but it really doesn't seem to have improved much.
Testing
<img width="156" height="202" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cdba5c85-607c-4112-b1ce-5ab45fd75628" />



Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)LeahTheTech
(*)Harbinger wraith is now disabled on the roleplay servers.

PULL REQUEST DETAILS

[Lord_earthfire]

I want to just write here the point i raised on the PR, in an attempt to keep the doscussion at one place:

I think the problem is less the harbinger tree, but more the balance of wraith point generation on RP.

I have seen wraith gaining a fuckton of points until they had enough to spam their abilities with inpunity. And once a wraith can spam theur abilities, there is no going back.

If we could rebalance their point gain, i think we could make them better escalation wise.

The chaos is not bad. It's good, and i want more of that on RP at round end.

[Calphrick]

I really don't like this. Wrath is meant to be a very impactful antagonist, and artificially restricting them feels bad. I also am against classic/RP specific changes in general, but that can't be helped honestly.

[JORJ949]

I feel like wraith in GENERAL needs more tuning to RP, rather than just removing one of the paths. Harbinger to me is the path I have the most RP opportunities with, the summons (particularly skeleton commanders) can actually talk and RP with the people around them unlike possessed items or rats from dens. The main problem I see with wraith is that even if you DO properly escalate with one person, your summons don't care and will attack anyone else in the vicinity. There's also the problem of combatting wraiths, aggressive wraiths are near impossible to combat as the blood and mess they cause washes away the salt, while a relatively passive and escalating wraith can result in the entire station being covered in salt in 10 minutes. Perhaps something could drop from wraith summons that allows you to make a more effective barrier, so summoning too MUCH stuff heavily restricts the wraith's movements. I also believe they need something like an "enemy designator" like flock has so that summons will target that person and then maybe get destroyed/enter a rest mode (Living objects pretend to stop being living is one idea)?

I have way more of an issue with trickster object possession and plague curses (uncurable if you have atheist, and often come from no interaction beyond me just going to kill their rats they've been summoning) than harbinger summons.

[Danger Noodle]

I don't like this at all, it doesn't really fix anything core to the issues I've seen people talk about with wraith on RP. Honestly I feel wraith itself is mostly fine minus wraith points being in a bit of a weird spot in terms of numbers. The problem in my eyes is actually combating one kind of sucks on both sides. You either need to turbosweat with spirit candles (likely as the only person trying to do so since they're hard to get) or the wraith waltzes into a salt pile they couldn't see because all the rest got stepped on. (A pile they likely didnt even mean to step on since ghost movement is jank when you're zooming around but that's a seperate issue)

Also, while harbinger is the most blatant in what it does and is likely why it got chosen for this PR, plague and trickster can do the same or more damage and chaos in skilled hands.

[Egregorious]

Not a fan of this. I like it when things devolve into chaos by the end of the round, and wraith is one of the few antags that manages to bring that to the crew rather than the crew having to go to it. I've never played in a harbinger round I thought was particularly unfun.

[Kotlol]

This debate again?! Fact: Wraith has a lot of trouble interacting in RP due to cooldowns and such. I rather have specific cooldowns like communication be decreased or more ways for the wraith to "interact non lethally" with the crew.

As for the harbinger, it's bascially FLOCK at that point without the converting of the station.
And I love flock admeme rounds!

[Taylorstar]

I think having a harbinger in RP is fine? people can do all kinds of fun bits with these tools RP doesn't have to be about green texts and rampages, it can be fun silly gimmicks too. The more tools we have the better options we have to do silly things, I don't mind tweaks and balances to streamline the flow of things like quicker cooldowns etc or things that encourage more interaction.

I'm always against nerfs and removals, the mentality should always be how can we build upon this or tweak this to get the results we want.

[Emimiyu]

Imo, Harbringer player summon seems friendlier to RP with than... poltergeist and plaguebringer rat. Most of them are big critter that are capable to talk. Rats tend to be easier to hunt and have less reason to talk, polt usually ended up just adding two extra wraith into the game. The NPC summon feels tiring but they are sometimes easy to wiped out if people are already on the fight mode.

Meanwhile, plaguebringer can gib people without them knowing and plague rats can do certain stuff such as rushing for captain spare and wielding weapon. And trickster usually ended up as three wraiths in a trenchcoat.

[Skotcher]

Going against the grain here and even my own personal feelings on this (I do really enjoy a harbinger round where the wraith & summons go hard on killing the station), but I think this change is probably for the best in terms of RP. While harbinger summons can have some funny and interactive RP, it does often tend towards 'friendtagging' where we keep around obvious threats we should be dealing with because "they're just a funny silly guy". I've seen summons ignore their masters orders, and I've seen crew defend "the peaceful one" summon from security when clearly the wraith and its summons are a threat.

Trickster has lots of tools to create interesting/unique RP, and Plaguebringer has elements that require interacting with the crew and station, but Harbinger really is just bringing the hammer down on the station or being relatively passive (at which point, why not go one of the other routes?). Personally would like to take a look at some of the mechanics from Harbinger and see if they could do with tweaking for more interesting interaction. Plaguebringer already has a mechanic where bodies need to be rotting in order to absorb essence; why not have a mechanic where the portal acts as a sacrifice zone? Could encourage having the Harbinger cooperate with the other antags in order to collect bodies to be sacrificed to create stronger summons or better point generation? Have some cult elements to it; maybe there's a corruption mechanic where you can begin hexing someone and if it's not dealt with, a ghost gets to inhabit the body of whoever you've hexed and is an antagonist. All that to say, while I'd prefer keeping Harbinger in the mix, I can see reasons why it's being disabled and might need some tweaking before being brought back to RP servers.

[Cropsey]

If there's want for a rebalance, wraith as a whole needs looking at. It's half-assed to single out harbinger. I don't mind wraith on RP but it really does have a tendency to be a landslide for the crew or an early loss if the wraith is inexperienced, and it could do with hitting a better middle ground.

[Angel]

I don't like this change. Wraith is a fun antagonist to deal with, both in classic and RP, and I do believe harbinger fits RP, abilities that summons NPCs like the wraith portal can be roleplayed around by crew and can generate interesting scenarios and circumstances, and the player controlled summons can interact with crew and also lead to fun RP scenarios. Meanwhile something like trickster possessed items, while you can RP around them similar to portals, because of their aggressive nature and relentless are a lot harder to just roleplay around without getting overwhelmed by them. Of course, my point is not that "possessed items bad", i actually love them, my point is that all wraith paths feels fine as they are in RP, maybe crew should just try roleplaying around the evil ghost threatening the station more? I often see a people just too hard focused into their own personal scenarios and ignoring the threatening things occurring around the station.
So, to finish off, I really don't believe there's a need to disable wraith in RP, but I like the idea someone else suggested of maybe killing summons giving you items to help counter the wraith, to make fighting back against the wraith more engaging and fun, this could be applied to all wraith paths, killing summons, breaking portals, breaking rat dens, killing possessed items all dropping some sort of item that could help counter the wraith, sounds really fun and gives crew more of a reason to deal with those other than to just stop them.

[xenomni]

Harbinger is based around the idea of just summoning as many minions as possible and overwhelming the crew. 

I think this is a cop-out, specifically because plaguebringer has the same exact thing going on with the mice- specifically with the little npc mice that auto attack. Wraith just needs a whole look at, this seems like a bandaid solution on a bullet wound. 

I think one of the biggest issues with player summons is just knowledge-ability. Players who are summoned are eager to cause chaos and wraiths who summon them tend not to give summons direction instead letting them just go wild. First time wraiths [or wraiths in general to be honest] may not be aware they are allowed to order their player summons around and the summons are SUPPOSED to follow those orders. 

As a smaller note, I think the threshold for spooky mode may be too low which could be triggering a lot of wraith anger. Dealing with a wraith on low population is more difficult and afaik wraith mode has a higher threshhold on its own unless it was reworked to just be spooky mode? Just a small side comment that may or may not be having an effect on wraith chaos to crew survivability.

[Lord_earthfire]

I think people should stop with the idea that people need have RP with the antag on RP. That's -not- needed.

The chaos the antag causes creates RP between other people. And if an antag causes chaos, they do their job for the server and the RP of others.

The question only is how much chaos is enough or too much. And wraith right now is often on the "too much" side. And that's why i think the issue with wraith is mostly one of numbers. This means a too high point generation on relatively few absorbed corpses and maybe some cooldowns need a tweak.

[Silent Majority]

I feel like plague is far more disruptive. It just has an invisible gib button that takes 2 minutes